FRED SANDBACK Notes SiteMap and Checklist 1. Fred Sandback, "Remarks on my actively engaged, and it had utopian Sculpture 1966--1986," Fred Sandback glimmerings of art and life happily Sculpture 1966-1986, (Mannheim: cohabitating." (Ibid) . 5 Kunsthalle, 1986), p. 12. 6. Fred Sandback, quoted in 74 Front 31 J 2. Ibid. Street: The Fred Sandback Museum, Sculpture 3. Ibid., pp. 12-13. Winchendon, Massachusetts (New York : 4 4. Ibid., p. 13. Dia Art Foundation , 1982), p. 4. 11 5. Sandback and a friend coined the term 7. While a student at Yale School of Art --2 to define space that was "literal, flat­ and Architecture, in 1967 Sandback took 8 7 footed and everyday. The idea was to have courses from both Robert Morris and 6 the work right there along with everything Donald Judd. I 10 I else in the world, not up on a spatial 8. Fred Sandback, quoted in 74 Front 9 pedestal. The term also involved the idea Street, p. 4. of utility-that a sculpture was there to be 9. Ibid . ( ) l. Untitled 1992 7. Untitled 1996 u~ SelectedBibliography >, Acrylic yarn (terracotta) Bas relief u~ Fred Sandback (Zurich: Kunsthaus, 1985). Fred Sandback: Sculpture 1966-1986 Collection of the artist Acrylic housepaint on wood panel 0 0 Fred Sandback : Diagonal Construction/ (Mannheim: Kunsthalle, 1986). 6: 2. Untitled 1977/1996 Collection of the artist ,..: r- Broken Lines. Skulpturen und Fred Sandback Vertical Constructions Acrylic yarn (light blue) 8. Untitled 1992/96 ~ ii Zeichnungen (Hannover: Kestner- (Mi.inster: Westfalischer Kunstverein, Collection of the artist Two-part vertical construction ',: Gesellschaft, 1987). 1987). 3. Untitled 1996 Acrylic yarn (pink) ~ Fred Sandback Sculpture (New Haven The Art of Fred Sandback: A Survey Six-part vertical construction Collection of the artist and Houston : Yale University Art Gallery (Krannert, Illinois: Krannert Art Museum, Acrylic yarn (white) 9. Untitled, diagonal (one offour) and Contemporary Arts Museum, 1991). 1985). Collection of the artist 1970/96 4. Untitled 1996 Acrylic yarn (cardinal red) Fred Sandback was born in Bronxville, New York, in 1943. After studying philosophy at I Bas relief, diptych Collection of the artist Yale College, he entered the sculpture program at Yale University School of Art and Acrylic housepaint on wood panel JO. Untitled 1977 Collection of the artist Two-part vertical construction Architecture, receiving a B.F.A., then, in 1969, an M.F.A .. Since the late sixties, 5. Untitled 1977 Acrylic yarn (black) Sandback has exhibited widely, both in the United States and abroad. Dia Center for the Four-part vertical construction Collection Dia Center for the Arts Arts has more than forty works by Sandback in its collection. ( Acrylic yarn (black) 11. Untitled 1996 Collection Dia Center for the Arts Bas relief, diptych Support for this exhibition has been provided by the members of the Dia Art Council, the September12, 1996-June 29, 1997 6. Untitled 1996 Acrylic housepaint on wood panel major annual support group of Dia Center for the Arts. Acrylic yarn (light brown, dark gray) Collection of the artist 548 West22nd Street, NewYork City Collection of the artist Mark Taylor will lecture on Sculpture on Thursday, April 3, 1997 at 6:30 pm at Dia. FRED SANDBACK Sculpture ~- "The fir st sculpture I made with a piece of string and a little wire was the outline of a intuitively adjusts a work with each new presentation, to each new location . In these Into this finely wrought mix, he has introduced an entirely new body of work. rectangular solid .. .lying on the floor. It was a ca sual act, but it seemed to open up a lot of sculptures, space takes on not only definition but an incorporeal palpability , often to Composed sometimes of one, sometimes two panels, these small, painted, wooden possibilities for me," Fred Sandback wrote in 1986, looking back over twenty years of the point where the spectator concentrates less on the edges , on the yam demarcating works seem to assume an identity by drawing on his printmaking practices rather activity to a seminal sculpture he had executed in 1966. 1 The key implications of that the forms, than on the planar or volumetric components contained within. Whether than on his three-dimensional sculpture . Compared both with his own plastic work as determining impul se remain at the heart of his practice today . For, in wanting to create transparent geometries or simple linear trajectories, Sandback's sculptures unequivocally well as with prints made by his contemporaries, Sandback's graphic work is sculpture that did not have an inside , he found through his seemingly "casual act " the occupy the same physical site as the viewer. Inhabiting what the artist has dubbed remarkable for the attention he pays to the material process by means of which each means whereby he "could assert a certain place or volume in its full materiality without "pedestrian space"-the ordinary matter-of -fact space coextensive with that of the viewer print is generated . These reliefs similarly evoke their origins, through stressing both occupying and ob scuring it." 2 and of the site-they reveal themselves over time, from different vantages, and according their physicality and their surface textures. By contrast, they are fundamentally to different perspectives. 5 The apprehension of his work thus involves a process of bodily different from his previous sculpture in that line is now conjured by drawing in For three decades, Sandback has pur sued these governing insights with remarkable based viewing, a phenomenological experiencing of each piece in situ . Yet Sandback has negative-by elimination . Whether principally shadow or tone, it appears as an consistency and inventiveness , creating a body of work that is informed by a signature been careful to distinguish his sculpture from certain kinds of installation practices, many absence as distinct from an edge or linear trajectory . Although quite small in size, style and yet , as a result of the close interdependence of each work with the architectural of which also evolved from Minimalist precepts . His work is never environmental, if that these reliefs have a deceptively ambiguous scale, largely because in cross-section the site in which it is realized, ever different in its manifestations . Arguably still the best implies disregarding the context. On the contrary, as he states : "It incorporates specific dimension of any single line is roughly commensurate with that of any drawn, commentator on his work, the artist has elucidated his abiding wish "to be in some sort of parts of the environment, but it's always coexistent with that environment, as opposed to nearby, in yam . The reliefs, therefore, appear to be fragments of something vast­ constituting material relationship with my environment " in limpid forthright terms : "My k overwhelming or destroying that environment in favor of a different one .''6 segments from a larger context, yet , at the same time, miniature objects . feeling persists ," he avowed, in that same article from 1986 , "that all my sculpture is part of a continuing attitude and relationship to things .... The sculptures address themselves to Burgeoning during the heyday of Minimalism, Sandback's work has distinguished and Through the introduction of these new sculptures, Sandback has greatly enriched and the particular space and time that they're in , but it may be that the more complete differentiated itself from that of his immediate forbears by his eschewal of the reductively complicated the language of this exhibition . Within a matrix that encompasses the situation I'm after is only constructed in time slowly, with the individual sculptures as its literal and of the concrete as its primary mode of being. 7 He explores material relationships strictly linear alongside planar and three-dimensional forms, free-standing and wall­ constituent parts ."3 via the incorporeal rather than through physical matter-via the interplay of vacancy and based sculptures, together with hybrids that straddle these two zones, he has volume-while recognizing that the illusory and the factual are inextricably intertwined . incorporated a body of work which exists on and in relation to its supporting planar Sandback has seamlessly integrated older with newer pieces for his odyssey through Dia's "Fact and illusion are equivalents ," he asserts: ''Trying to weed one out in favor of the surface and yet extends far beyond it into the surrounding space. Fact and illusion second floor gallery. He orients and grounds the viewer in a particular place , a specific other is dealing with an incomplete situation.'' 8 Elaborating on this , he stressed, "In no have been newly interwoven, their interdependence revealed in unexpected ways. situation, by means of a stringent selection from his deliberately circumscribed lexicon­ way is my work illusionistic . Illusionistic art refers you away from its factual existence Moreover, by reconfiguring once more the relationship between the empty and the each sculpture newly parsed for the site . "I don't feel that once a piece is made , then it 's towards something else. My work is full of illusions , but they don't refer to anything. "9 substantive , Sandback has created a space that has a wholly different sense of done with," he explained. "I continue to work with older schemata and formats , and often corporeality to it from anything found hitherto in his art . In these reliefs, he begin to get what I want out of them only after many reworkings . Though the same In choosing from his repertoire those three-dimensional works to be included in this persuades us that the apparition of space derives not from the linear negative , but substructure may be used many times, it appears each time in a new light. It is the exhibition, Sandback eliminated early pieces which utilize metal rods or wire , focusing from the physical plane between these gaps .